Issaquah Police have arrested a man in a Lovers sex toy store robbery that might be linked to a similar incident at a Lovers location in Redmond.
On Tuesday, a male suspect robbed a Redmond Lovers store in the 15000 block of Northeast 24th Street at gunpoint, making off with an undisclosed amount of cash.
Detective Sgt. Kevin Nash of the Issaquah Police Department said that the Issaquah Police had been developing leads in an armed robbery of the Lovers on East Lake Sammamish Parkway that happened last Thursday.
"We reviewed the video from Redmond, and to us it looked like the Issaquah robbery," Nash said.
Redmond Police spokesman Jim Bove said investigators here are still reviewing Tuesday's robbery and have not yet officially named the 42-year-old Issaquah man as a suspect in the Redmond case.
"There are many similarities in the two robberies, however, since ours just occurred yesterday we are still gathering evidence and working with their detectives," Bove said in an email. "The robber in both cases had similar clothing, MO, and hit the same store, but we need to find a definitive link before we can arrest someone."
Issaquah Police arrested the suspect Tuesday night in the 22500 block of S.E. 56th in Issaquah, near where he lives in an apartment complex, which happens to be near the Issaquah Lovers store.
Nash said police were waiting at his vehicle when he came up to it. On searching the vehicle, police recovered cash, the clothing he is believed to have used in the robberies, and a black "Airsoft" gun that looks very much like a .380 Beretta semi-automatic weapon, Nash said.
"When I saw it I was like, 'Oh, wow,'" he said, because it looks like the real thing until close inspection.
"You have to think about what effect the gun has on victims," even when it's not real, Nash said.
Nash said it was thanks to good police work by the department's patrol officers and detectives that the suspect was caught. He was booked into King County jail Tuesday night on Burglary 1 charges in the Issaquah heist, and likely will be arraigned Thursday.
—Caitlin Moran contributed to this report.
